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Agressive Puppy !

by Evette Pricilla

I'm Not An Aggressive Puppy!

Hi, my name is Evette and I just recently bought a 4 month old Cocker spaniel. My twin baby brothers play very rough with him and recently my spaniel has been growling and biting at them.

Is this normal?

Will he grow up to be an aggressive dog?

What should I do?

Reply from Pauline - Web Owner

I would never recommend playing too aggressively with puppies, particularly cocker spaniels.

I strongly urge you to teach your baby brothers how to behave around puppies and how to handle them.

Please don't allow them unsupervised access to the puppy otherwise there will be trouble. Take a look at this article and 'read the riot act' to your brothers or where any other children come into close contact with your puppy (if they're old enough).

That said, it's time to begin resolving the immediate problem.

The first step is not to 'rough house' your puppy, or allow others to; cocker spaniels don't usually like too much rough and tumble.

Puppies learn through play and interaction with their mother and siblings. When a puppy is removed from that environment it's then up to us to teach them what's acceptable behavior and what's not.

For example, if a puppy bites too hard whilst playing, the mother or siblings will yelp loudly and may not play with the biting puppy for a little while. This teaches the puppy not to bite too hard next time.

This is called Bite Inhibition and it's the ability to control how hard (or gently) the puppy bites.

Imagine if your puppy played as aggressively as he is now, when he's an adult dog. A nip or a bite, or even a scratch, from an adult dog is not the same as that from a puppy - it's much, much worse and could be very dangerous! It needs to be managed now.

In addition, if your puppy has aggressive tendencies, or even if he hasn't, I wouldn't recommend that you play tug of war with him - at least not until he's an adult dog. Find out why I don't recommend you play tug of war with puppies until they're older.

On the other hand, there's an argument to say that if your puppy is very well-trained and responds well to obedience commands (in all circumstances) then rough play may be okay but only on the understanding that all play stops immediately on your command.

Comments for Agressive Puppy !

If you could tell your brothers to be gentle on the dog, please do. Playing or handling dogs roughly could only TRIGGER your dog's aggression. They may be a member of our families, but they're still animals which have the instinctive nature to protect and defend themselves.

Aggression is normal in dogs - it's like cancer once you have it, it will only get worse. The best thing you could do is to control and prevent it from getting worse.

If you wanna learn more about dog aggression and how to prevent and control it, visit this page dogtrainingasleader.com, don't forget the www at the beginning.

This has been very effective for me in training my dogs. They also have over 250 training videos which could be really helpful in solving your other doggy issues as well.

Best of luck!

Rating

Aggressive Play Equals Aggressive Puppy!by: Anonymous

I wouldn't recommend playing too rough with puppies as they need to learn when they are being rough.

I think puppies that are handled aggressively tend to grow up to be aggressive dogs!